George Lincoln Goodale
American botanist (1839–1923)
George Lincoln Goodale (August 3, 1839 – April 12, 1923) was an American botanist and the first director of Harvard's Botanical Museum (now part of the Harvard Museum of Natural History). It was he who commissioned the making of the university's legendary Glass Flowers collection.
Early life
Goodale was born in Saco, Maine. He graduated from Amherst College in 1860 and from Harvard Medical School in 1863, after which he practiced in Portland, Maine, until 1867.
Career
Goodale became professor of natural science and applied chemistry at Bowdoin. In 1872, he was appointed instructor in botany and University lecturer on vegetable physiology at Harvard, and advanced to assistant professor of the latter subject a year later. In 1878, he became a professor of botany and the Fisher professor of natural science, a chair formerly held by Asa Gray.
Glass Flowers
At some point during his career as a Harvard/Radcliffe Professor, Goodale taught avid Botany student Mary Lee Ware - born to the Elizabeth Cabot Lee (from then on Elizabeth C. Ware) and Dr. Charles Eliot Ware; a twist of fate that would turn critical later. After 1879, Goodale served as the first director of Harvard's Botanical Museum, but filling it was a slight problem for, at that time, Harvard was the global center of botanical study.
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This entry incorporates text from “George Lincoln Goodale” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.